The following story contains no overt
sex, but is intended for readers who are comfortable with gay sexuality
and issues surrounding such topics.

This story is copyrighted by the
author. One copy is posted to the NIFTY Archives under the previsions
of their submission agreement. This story my not be copied in any
form or posted to any other site without the expressed written permission
of the author.

This is a work of fiction.

Comments and criticisms may be addressed
to the author at the e-mail address below.

jvoyager@hotmail.com

***

The photo shoot
took over an hour. If anything, Jay was a perfectionist. He
wanted every pose right, the light
right,
the angles right. At first I thought it was just his artistic standards
which were making it slow. Then I realized
he was
enjoying it, making it last. The model was hot, a cute college guy
with a nice body and no inhibitions. He'd
stripped
with out a single complaint and made no pretense of modesty. We were
screening models for life
drawing
classes and this guy looked like a winner.

Jay was
aroused by the heightened erotic environment we found ourselves in; behind
locked doors with a great
looking
naked guy, the atmosphere was charged, sexually charged. And Jay
was aroused, that much was very
clear.
His cock was hard in his slacks, outlined against the fabric. But
it didn't stop there. A damp spot was
slowly
growing just at the place where his cock head had to be throbbing.
He was hard and pulsing and oozing
pre cum.
And all the while, keeping his voice regular, even, low, he was giving
the naked model directions, posing
him, moving
an arm, adjusting a leg.

What's going
on? I knew Jay in the context of church, conservative, bible thumping
church, at that. There was
a disconnect
here in my own mind and I had begun to suspect in Jay's mind as well.

How open
could I be with him, now much could I tell him about my own sexual past?
For now I wasn't saying
anything.
I'd ask a few questions, see what he was willing to share, and keep my
own mouth shut.

When the secession
ended we walked across the campus to my home. My wife was up stairs
getting the kids to
bed. Jay
and I went through to the kitchen, made coffee and stood leaning against
the counter, talking about safe,
irrelevant stuff.
I let the conversation drift, knowing at some point there would be a natural
break. I didn't want
to force it.
I didn't want to scare him off by moving too quickly to the questions
I really wanted to ask, the
questions I really
wanted him to answer.

The break came;
he asked a question and I gave a one word answer. He didn't ask
another question and I, too,
remained silent.
We leaned back against the counter and sipped coffee, listening to the
sound of my wife's
movements upstairs
in the old house. This was as private as it was going to get.
Any moment now she would
finish up with
the kids and join us.

I don't remember
how I asked the question. I don't think it was as overt as "so you
like guys," but whatever I said,
however I said
it, the dam broke. I realized later that he really had wanted to
talk. He'd probably been wanting
to talk for weeks.
But what did
his willingness to tell me that what I had suspected was true mean about
his suspicions about me.
I was in the
closet so deep there was no light getting in. But had he guessed,
had I somehow given myself away?
Perhaps, he just
needed to talk to someone whom he considered safe, someone from a different
college than
his own, someone
who was not a part of the narrow, legalistic church where he was
imprisoned. Maybe he'd not
suspected anything
about me after all. Maybe he saw me as a "Father Confessor,"
a safe and willing ear.

But now
that Jay was talking, I had a new problem. How open could I dare
be with him? Could I tell him that I
had a history
of sex with other guys that was probably longer and more complex than his
own? Did I dare tell him
that I
had been looking him over, thinking about him, lusting after him for as
long as I had known him? All that, on
both his
part and mine, was so alien to the facades we had both erected.

Jay and
I, and his wife and mine, his kids and mine, had become friends in the
context of church or church related
organizations.
In both his case and mine we had a lot riding on our images as upright,
straight men, husbands and
fathers,
let along, teachers. It was the Seventies, after all, the Midwest,
a small college town and not exactly what
could be
called an open and accepting society.

I worried
about it at first. Jay was telling me so much about himself.
He was so open, so willing to share his entire
history,
the sad and scary stuff as well as the touching events of his life, the
realizations at an early age, his
relationships
with his father, his mother, his kid brother. All of it made my heart
open up to him, love him, want him.

But as our
conversations went on I realized that Jay was not asking me for any information
about myself. He
never asked
me if I had ever been attracted to another guy. He certainly never
asked if I had ever had sex with
another
guy.

"Yes,"
Jay, "I've been there, I know that, I understand that feeling you tell
me about, that longing you relate." At
times I
wanted to scream at him, "Stop, listen to me, let me tell you my history,
my wonderful and sad and awful
moments.
Let me tell you about the boys at the Scout camp when I was fourteen, the
golden, beauty of them, the
swimming
pool, the river, wet and glistening in the hot Mississippi sun. Let
me tell you about Phil, gentle, easy,
willing
to take time with me, the older hero of my dreams, willing to show me,
care for me, hold me, initiate me into
the wonders
and the pain. Let me tell you about Eric, who, at seventeen I loved
until I really thought my heart
would burst,
Eric, who made all the clichés I'd ever heard ring true in my own
being; infatuation, puppy love,
enamorment,
lust, a deep abiding love that left a scar that I still bear.

But Jay's
own story unfolded and I listened, said I could "sort of understand."
I never told him I knew.

And, still,
I continued to wonder, did he suspect? Did he guess that as a boy,
I had loved boys, as a man,
I had loved
men? He didn't ask and I felt more and more isolated from the truth.
I felt that Jay needed
me to be
the straight guy in more than one meaning of that word. He needed
someone, maybe me, to be the
representative
of the straight world, saying "it's okay, Jay, you can be a part of this
world, too, you can be
accepted.
You can talk to me and know I accept even if I don't understand, I can
love you the way straight guys
love one
another, the jocks and the fraternity guys, the guys you wanted to be,
the guys you wanted to be accepted
by when
you were twenty or eighteen or thirty."

I guess
at some point I began to think, so wrongly, that Jay needed me to be straight.
Maybe he didn't
want gay
friend. For as long as he also had to maintain his facade in an unaccetping
world, he could not let himself
be seen
with a guy whom others knew, or even suspected might be gay, might be a
lover.

So the kitchen
conversations went on. The dialog continued. Jay's own walls
came down, at least to me; mine
remained
as high and as rigid as ever. I had a dream once during those
days in which Jay was taking down the
bricks
from a wall around himself and I was using the bricks he had discarded
to build my own wall higher.

But the
day came when Jay did approach me sexually. He did it with a hug
that lasted a bit too long, to long for
the hardy
greetings straight guys use, the hardy slaps on the shoulder as you hug.
A straight friend told me once,
"It's fine
for guys to hug, just not too tight, and you slap the other guy's shoulder
three times when you hug him,
three times,
slap, slap, slap. Each slap is a word, a code, it means 'I'm not gay.'
That way it's okay for guys to
hug."

Jay didn't
slap. And his hugs became tighter, longer. I could feel his
body move against mine, mine against his.
Then one
day, in the privacy of my office, he kissed me, gently, softly, on the
cheek. I wanted to kiss him back, to
kiss his
mouth, to ravage him.

But my wall
was getting higher all the time, brick by brick. I had trapped myself
into a persona, a role, and I didn't
know how
to get out.

So when
we had sex, and it was inevitable that we would, I played the innocent.
Jay had to take the lead.

"Show me,
Jay." It was all I could say. I had built the walls too high,
the facade to strong. I had to continue to
pretend
that this was all new to me. I pretended reticence, uncertainty,
fear. There was no chance for us and I
think we
both knew it.

Over the
years we've met many times. My own walls had, in part, come down.
Me met on a more equal
footing
but with the weight of the past too heavy to bear. Friends, loving
friends, caring, talking, always there
when the
other is in need, but lovers, only in some crippled way, too hampered by
the walls, the walls still standing
and the
walls we have long since torn down.